The Exclusivity of Jesus | Pastor Matthew Johnson

"It is exclusive. But hear me, everyone's invited. It doesn't matter your past. It doesn't matter the evil that you've done." - Pastor Matthew Johnson

The Tree Church's ongoing sermon series, Reconstruct, is not designed to protect people from hard questions. It is designed to face them. Pastor Matthew Johnson opened this Mother's Day message by returning to the premise that has driven the series from the beginning: there are things in the Christian faith that are genuinely difficult, and avoiding them does more damage than addressing them head-on.

The imagery he returned to was that of a home inspector. An inspector's job is not to condemn a house - it is to find what is weak so it can be made stronger. That is the posture of Reconstruct. Not deconstruction for its own sake, but honest examination in service of a stronger faith.

With that foundation in place, Pastor Matthew turned to one of the most contested claims in all of Christianity.

Before reading a single verse, Pastor Matthew took a moment to name what was about to happen in the room. On a Sunday with guests, baptisms, and first-time visitors, he chose not to soften the topic he had prepared. He chose to go further into it.

The subject was exclusivity - the Christian conviction that Jesus is the only way to salvation, eternal life, and relationship with God. Not one way among many. Not the best of several options. The only way.

Pastor Matthew acknowledged plainly that this claim would land on some people in the room as arrogance, as narrow-mindedness, and as judgment. He did not dismiss that reaction. He asked only that people stay with him long enough to understand why Christians believe what they believe.

The sermon moved into Scripture with John 10:10, where Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd whose sheep know his voice. Everything that sets itself against him - any system, any voice, any alternative - exists, Jesus says, only to steal, kill, and destroy. Jesus alone came to bring life, and to bring it abundantly.

From there, Pastor Matthew turned to John 14 and the account of the Last Supper. Jesus, preparing his disciples for his departure, speaks words of comfort - but the comfort he offers is anchored in an exclusive claim. "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Pastor Matthew did not treat this as one theological position among several. He treated it as Jesus's own direct statement about reality. Every other religion, every other pathway, every other system - according to Jesus himself - does not lead to life. It leads to destruction.

The exclusivity Pastor Matthew described did not stop at belief. He pushed further, making the case from multiple passages in John's Gospel that genuine faith in Jesus produces obedience. Claiming Jesus as Lord while living in open defiance of his teaching is, according to Scripture, no claim at all.

Pastor Matthew was careful to distinguish between perfection and direction. Christians are not called to be perfect. But when sin is recognized as sin, the response is confession, repentance, and a fight against it - not permission to remain in it. He worked through a direct and practical list: how followers of Jesus use their words, how they treat their enemies, how they conduct themselves financially and sexually, how they serve. The exclusivity of following Jesus, he argued, reaches into every area of life.

This was not presented as burden. It was presented as the shape of a surrendered life.

Before moving into Acts, Pastor Matthew paused to address the resistance that exclusive claims naturally produce. He identified two sources. The first is simple human rebellion - the refusal to be told what to do, a quality he acknowledged freely in himself. The second is cultural: a world that has trained people to believe they have the right to create their own truth. When someone arrives and says that truth is not self-made, the reaction is sharp.

But Pastor Matthew offered a reframe. Exclusivity is not inherently a problem. Two plus two equals four - exclusively. Interstate 75 south leads to Florida - exclusively. Nobody objects to those claims because they are simply true and there is no better alternative. Exclusivity only becomes a problem when it shuts out a different and better way. The question the sermon was building toward was whether Jesus is, in fact, the only and best way.

To answer that question, Pastor Matthew moved to Acts 3 and 4. Peter and John, walking to the temple in Jerusalem, encounter a man who has been crippled from birth. He has spent his life begging at the gate. Peter stops, tells him plainly that he has no silver or gold, and then speaks healing over him in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The man leaps to his feet.

The miracle draws a crowd. Peter addresses them, making clear that the healing did not come from him or John - it came from Jesus, the same Jesus the crowd had rejected and crucified, the same Jesus God raised from the dead. The same Jesus whose power was now standing a formerly crippled man on his feet in front of all of them.

The religious leaders had Peter and John arrested. The next morning, they demanded an explanation. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, gave them one - directly and without hesitation. It was Jesus. The stone the builders rejected had become the cornerstone. And then the line that became the anchor of the entire sermon: "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

The sermon closed with the question Pastor Matthew had been building toward the entire time. Is Jesus the only and best way? He answered it not with argument alone but with witness. The disciples who stood before the religious leaders that morning were the same men who had spent three years with Jesus. They had watched him serve. They had watched him heal. They had watched him die. And they had watched him come back to life - touched his hands, seen his wounds, spoken with him.

These were not men protecting a system or holding onto power. They were men who had seen something real and could not stop talking about it, even when threatened with death. And most of them died for it.

Pastor Matthew's closing appeal was both clear and open-handed. The way is exclusive. That is simply what Jesus declared, what his disciples confirmed, and what Christians believe. But the invitation attached to that exclusive way belongs to everyone - regardless of background, history, family, nationality, or education. No one earns it. No one qualifies for it on their own. It is offered to anyone willing to trust Jesus and surrender their life to him.
That, Pastor Matthew said, is not arrogance. That is the most generous offer ever made.

The Tree Church is a multi-campus church with locations in Lancaster, Ohio and Logan, Ohio, gathering every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM. Whether you are exploring faith for the first time or looking for a church home in the Lancaster or Logan area, you are welcome here.

Learn more and plan your visit at thetreechurch.com.